


family matters

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Domestic, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raising children who are part-Frost Giant and all-mischief is no easy task. Sif wants Loki to tell the truth, Loki wants to be left alone, and the kids just want to know where this magical power to freeze things came from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	family matters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nayanroo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/gifts).



When she married, the idea of children had not really occurred to Sif. As second in line for the throne, the push for Loki to sire children was not great, and from betrothal to wedding ceremony, not a word was spoken to either of them about producing progeny. One of Frigga's handmaidens mentioned something in passing as they were readying Sif's hair, but one sharp glance from Sif had put a quick end to _that_. They were at best part of a very distant future-- very, very distant, for Sif had no plans to set aside her sword to bounce a baby on her lap any time soon, nor did she intend to leave her husband behind when she rode off to war. Loki fought with a vicious grace that Sif dearly loved to see in action, and she would not sacrifice the sight of it for anything. 

Nevertheless, the rest of Asgard seemed determined, after their union, to interrupt their marital bliss with babies. Not a week would go by that someone did not mention it, sometimes in jest, sometimes serious, and sometimes in a manner that should have been a jest, but which clearly was not.

"Oh, you must have children eventually," Volstagg said once, apropos of nothing, during a victory feast celebrating their recent defeat of some evil wizard in a distant realm. "For they are a light in your old age! Someone to come home to after a fight who will actually listen to your tales of glorious battle."

"If Gudrunn is so tired of your tales, my friend, perhaps you should endeavour to put your mouth to better use," Loki suggested, and Volstagg roared with laughter and slapped him on the back, nearly pushing Loki into his plate. Volstagg picked up a leg of roast fowl and made a show of toasting Loki with it. "I believe I shall take your advice, my lord," he said, winking, and by the time he wandered away, Sif would swear there was a hint of a blush on her husband's cheeks. 

"You have been unusually quiet all evening," Sif observed, when they returned to their chambers. "Something troubles you?" 

"Children," he said, frowning. 

"Well," she said easily, "we have none, so let it trouble you no further. Unless that is what troubles you, I suppose." 

"I am not entirely sure," he sighed. 

"Do you want children?" she asked, vaguely uncomfortable. 

"No," he said, but he sounded uncertain. "Yes. Perhaps. I don't know." 

She watched him carefully for a moment, the nervous way his fingers moved, tucking and untucking themselves against his palm. Loki was not possessed of many overt signs of discomfort, but this one she knew quite well, for this was the look that he wore on the day long ago when he and Thor had taken her into their confidence, explaining how Odin had brought Loki to Asgard as a baby and from whence he had come. 

"Ah," she said, remembering Loki's abashed expression years before. "You are worried that...?" 

She lets the words hang between them, unspoken. 

"It might be for the best that we did not," he said.

"I suppose you will have to feign interest in my tales of glorious battle all on your own, then," she said, stretching her long body out on their bed. He smiled, then, and they did not return to the subject. 

But then came the day that Sif was poisoned on an excursion to Niflheim, and the healer who treated her upon their return took great pains to reassure her that she would recover quickly and that _the child_ was unharmed. She dropped her sword onto the hard stone floor in shock and said, "What child?" 

"Yours, my lady," the healer said, blinking in confusion. "Did you not know?" 

"No," she murmured. She thought of Loki and his nervous, twitching fingers, and she could feel her own brow furrow. "But... all is well, you said." 

"Yes, my lady," the healer replied, and then frowned. "I did the spell twice to be sure, for this poison is dreadfully potent, but your daughter is perfectly healthy, I assure you. She will doubtless make a fine warrior one day, with a constitution as strong as this." 

"I should hope so," Sif said, her voice ringing with pride, for the thought of what her children might _be_ had never before entered her mind, resolved as they had been to set the matter aside. 

Loki stepped in shortly after the healer left, peering around the curtains with only a hint of anxiety on his face. 

"You are well?" he asked. 

"Everyone here is well," Sif said, clearing her throat, and he looked at her strangely. 

"Yes," he said, narrowing his eyes at her odd choice of words. "We two are fine." 

"Three," she corrected quietly, and waited. It took him only the space of a few seconds to arrive at the appropriate conclusion, and she knew the precise moment he did, for he sat down heavily in the nearest chair, quite without his usual grace. 

"She is fine," Sif said, watching him closely. 

"Fine," Loki repeated. "By which I presume you mean _normal_." 

"I do not," Sif said archly. "No child of ours would ever be damned with such faint praise as to say she was normal." 

Her ferocity seemed to startle him out of his melancholy, and when next he spoke there was a trace of better humor in it, albeit his usual brand of wry wit. 

"I am doomed to wait on a family of warriors for all eternity," he sighed dramatically. 

"Perhaps so," she said, grinning. "Or perhaps it is I who will endure endless years of magic and the mischief made with it." 

He brightened considerably at that, and she rolled her eyes. 

"Hold a moment, you were _poisoned_ ," he said suddenly, looking around as though to demand a healer materialize immediately. 

"I told you, she is fine. The healer said she must be very strong to withstand all of that," Sif said proudly. 

"Like her mother," he replied. 

"Or her father," Sif amended fiercely, and at that, he did smile. 

The question of who would spend more time minding the children was easily resolved, for Loki, once he grew accustomed to the idea of fatherhood and less terrified of endless thoughts of inevitable catastrophes resulting from their consanguinity to Asgard's ancient enemies, felt strongly that there was absolutely no one but Sif who should even be allowed near the children unsupervised, except possibly Frigga, and even then only for short periods of time. 

"I think that most of Asgard is perfectly qualified to mind a child," Sif said, idly sharpening a pair of daggers over her the slightly rounded curve of her stomach. "They have been caring for children for quite some time, husband." 

"Not _ours_ ," he said disdainfully. "Do you not think that such a child will have more wit and cunning as a babe than half of Asgard does upon reaching the age of majority?" 

"Someone raised _you_ ," she pointed out. "And me." 

"True enough," he said, but he clearly retained his initial skepticism. 

The question of when and how to explain Loki's peculiar heritage, and thus, that of both their children, however, proved much more difficult a task. She had thought that they had settled all of that before they married, for if she had told him once, she had told him a thousand times that she, like Thor and Frigga and the Allfather, cared not a whit for the manner of the blood that ran in his veins. 

But for all the feats of glory Sif had ever accomplished on the field of battle, for all her strength in arms and skill with a blade, it was none of it comparable to the insurmountably difficult prospect of convincing her gleefully dishonest, morally flexible trickster husband to _tell the truth_ , particularly when it was a subject he deemed so reprehensible that it ought never to be spoken of, even by family, or perhaps _especially by family_. 

"What good can come of it?" Loki demanded, each time Sif raised the question; this time, just before the birth of their second child. 

"Surely no good can come of silence," Sif always said, but he would never hear it, and this occasion proved no different. "Suppose they're as bothered by it as you are, should they not hear it from you first?" 

He did not answer, which she supposed was answer enough.

Perversely, she had willed either of the children to exhibit some kind of overt sign of their parentage at birth, something to force Loki's hand and make him address the subject before too many years had gone by, for she shuddered to think of what might have been, had his family kept this from him. Well she knew of Loki's unfortunate tendency to hoard bad feeling like a dragon keeping its treasure, and this particular secret could only have resulted in catastrophe if not properly addressed. 

But the children were exceedingly Asgardian, and though Loki never said it in Sif's presence, she knew it was a relief to him that they were, indeed, _normal_. Dagna was dark-headed and fair-skinned with bright intelligent eyes that always reminded Sif of Loki, and Ullr's complexion was ruddy and his hair was as light as hers had been as a child, a perfectly beautiful pair of clever, resourceful, completely _Asgardian_ children. And so it came to pass that Dagna came to an age where she could visit the training yard and best half the others there without trouble, and Ullr progressed in his study of magic and was well ahead of all the other children studying in the mages' courts, yet no one had mentioned anything to either of them about the Jotnar or their curious relationship to the throne of that realm. 

This illusion of normalcy could not, of course, last forever, and she hoped only that when at last it faded, _her_ children would have the good sense not to bring down the kingdom over it.  
+

The day was clear and the light of the Great Tree was bright when Dagna Lokadóttir made her way to the training yard. By midday she had taken on half the yard, and she was having trouble convincing her friends to try again.

"I will not fight you again today," her friend Havelock remarked. "I am still bleeding from the last round." 

" _I_ have not been defeated today," said Arild, one of Volstagg's many sons. 

Dagna looked skeptically at his sword and shield. "Perhaps if you combined your strength," she said, laughing at them. "Come on, then, let's have it." 

Arild and Havelock attacked her together, one charging at her from each side; Havelock swung for her legs while Arild feinted at her head, and her defensive kick kept her on her feet, but left Arild free to grip her arms and pull them roughly behind her back. 

"Do you yield, Trickster's daughter?" Arild asked, tugging harder on her wrists with one strong hand while the other held a blade to her neck. Panic seized her, an odd feeling, to be certain, for she had never felt the cold bite of it before. But there was more to this chill than fear, surely, and suddenly Arild yelped and released her. 

Her arm was covered in a solid block of ice, and when she held it up before her, she realized that it was shaped and sharpened like a blade. 

"How have you done that?" Havelock demanded, and Dagna looked at Arild's hands, which seemed to have been burned, and she glanced at the ice covering her arm with interest. 

"How strange," she murmured, and while she was distracted, Arild promptly kicked her feet out from under her. 

"You are going to regret that," she swore, grimacing up at them. 

"He can regret it later," Havelock said. "You have done this, you have to help me get him to the healing rooms." 

"Very well," she sighed. "But only because I do not wish to hear his father complain to mine when he cries about it later." 

Volstagg met them at the healing rooms after Arild's hands had been bandaged, and of course, the first words out of his mouth were to complain at his loss in the training yard. 

"There is no shame in that, my lad," Volstagg said, patting Arild's shoulder. "Many is the time I have lost a bout to her mother." 

"It was not a fair bout," Arild complained to his father. "She used _magic_ on us." 

Dagna rolled her eyes. "Even if I _had_ , what good is a warrior who does not use all of her strengths in battle? If you had the wit of a drunken bilgesnipe you might have bested me, but since you do not, go on back to Gudrunn, then, and let those with real strength get back to training to use it." 

Arild launched himself toward her, as she expected he might. She braced for the blow, determined to beat him again, and in front of his own father, for added insult to his injuries. But before she could set to it properly, Volstagg intervened, reaching down to pluck his son off the ground by the neck of his padded training armor. 

"You have lost, my son," Volstagg said. "You can try again when next you meet in the training yard." 

Arild glared at her on the way out of the room, but Dagna only stared coolly back. 

"You might have said you were sorry," Havelock said. 

"Oh, but that would have been a _lie_ ," Dagna said, her voice sweet and innocent, but Havelock knew her better than that, and only rolled his eyes.

"What manner of magic was that?" 

"Oh, something Ullr showed me," she lied, for truly she was unsure of what to make of this curious new talent. 

"You _did_ use magic," Havelock laughed, shaking his head, and she did her best to look as though she were somewhat ashamed. "Liar." 

"If you were aiming to insult me, Havelock, you will have to improve your marksmanship," Dagna said, grinning. 

"It was a compliment, of course, my friend," Havelock replied. "Are you returning to the yard today? I must go home for a time." 

"I should turn my feet towards home as well," Dagna said, nodding to her friend as she left. 

When she reached her family's sprawling chambers, she collapsed briefly on the couch by the fire, glad to have come home at a time when she could be alone with her thoughts. She would not have minded overly much if Arild's accusations had been true-- she had never been overly covetous of Ullr's predilections for the magical arts, but in the privacy of her own mind she must at least admit to a passing interest in it. 

She closed her eyes and concentrated, willing the ice to return, but nothing happened. For all she knew, Father was somehow to blame-- not an impossible notion, she thought grimly, and if she ever discovered that he had been lurking about the training grounds and had dared to intervene in one of her bouts, as though she could not handle herself alone, she might never forgive him. 

The thought of the training yard gave her an idea, remembering the feeling of Arild's blade against her throat and the rising sense of panic in her gut. She crept slowly towards the fire. The flames flickered up toward her face, an uncomfortable warmth, and her hand hovered just out of reach of the fire. 

"Oh, what's the worst that could happen," she murmured, and with her eyes shut, she pushed her hand into the flames. 

She expected pain, but there was none, and when she opened her eyes, the ice had returned. Underneath it her skin looked strange in the firelight, the color of it slightly off, but then she heard Ullr's footsteps at the entryway, and she yanked her hand back, shaking it, unwilling to share this discovery for the present, but it was too late. 

"What spell is that?" Ullr demanded, pushing at his sister. "Show me! All I can do is make lights and, once, a snake made of light. I can barely even force water to _move_ yet, how have you done this?"

"I don't know," Dagna said, shrugging, the ice surrounding her arm glimmering in the firelight. "That is what I have been trying to discover."

Ullr stalked around her, inspecting her arm with curious intensity. "Is it not cold on your skin?"

"Not really," she replied. Her nose wrinkled as she thought on it a moment. "It feels... right."

"I do not understand," Ullr said, pouting slightly. "Did you find it in a book?"

"No," she sighed again. "I told you--"

They heard voices at the door, and when Ullr realized their parents had returned, he dashed toward the entryway to meet them, ignoring Dagna and her strange new talent for the moment.

"Father, Father," Ullr cried, dashing over to Sif and Loki. "Come and see what magic Dagna has learned to do and explain to me how to do it, for she is refusing to tell me."

"A warrior and a magician, what _will_ people say," Loki said, letting Ullr pull him along.

"Slow down," Sif laughed, but her laughter stopped abruptly when she caught a glimpse of her daughter's arm and the ice that covered it. "Oh."

"Oh," Loki echoed, his face paler than usual.

Dagna blinked at him curiously, but said nothing. Her father's face rather quickly became a mask of casual indifference, but while Ullr may have inherited the magic, Dagna had the full measure of her father's uncanny ability to notice even the smallest details, coupled with her mother's keen eye for _weakness_ , so she had not failed to see and understand her father's expression at the sight of her arm. 

She shook her arm and the icy blade disappeared, and there again came the same haunted look. She raised an eyebrow in question; Loki ignored it. 

"Children, excuse us a moment," Sif said, wrapping her hand around Loki's arm.

"But Mother--" Ullr began, and Sif held up her hand.

"A moment," she said firmly, and Ullr sighed and flopped onto the nearby couch, but not for long: as soon as their parents had gone into the adjoining room, he was up, stomping around and making entirely too much noise for Dagna to overhear her parents' whispered conversation. 

"Will you be _quiet_ ," Dagna hissed. "I am trying to hear what they're saying." 

Ullr tripped and crashed into one of the low tables by the fire, and her parents voices stopped abruptly. From the next room, all was silence, and she knew her father had done something to prevent them from hearing. 

"How can you be so graceless?" Dagna demanded, rounding on her brother. "What will you do in a fight, fall down and hope your enemies are distracted with laughter?" 

"I think I should try not to be in a fight at all," Ullr said blithely, and Dagna shook her head at him.

+

No answers were forthcoming from either of her parents; her father had, frankly, _sulked_ for the remainder of the evening, and on the one occasion she tried to pester him, Sif had intervened and sent her off to mind Ullr instead. 

That this curious new ability seemed to trouble her father raised a whole host of interesting questions, for if there was anything that she shared with him it was a sense of _fun_ that the rest of Asgard did not quite understand, and surely whatever talent brought ice to her arm in time of trouble could be put to better, more mischievous use, if only she could figure out what it was.

If he will not discuss it, that must be some manner of clue, but she rose early this morning and spent the better part of the day thinking on it and came up with nothing, nor could she uncover how to use these new abilities unless she was imperiled, which seemed useless. Just as she had resolved to go in search of her parents and devil some answers out of them if necessary, her grandmother appeared in the garden where she had been sitting all morning. 

"Grandmother," Dagna said, nodding up at Frigga, who sat down next to her on the bench.

"Something troubles you, my dear?" Frigga asked. 

"No," Dagna said, though she said it with a sigh, for she was never terribly good at lying to her grandparents. They both always seemed to know precisely what she was doing, which took all the fun out of the experience. "Perhaps. I do not know. I have a mystery on my hands, Grandmother, and no way of solving it without asking questions, but I do not know the questions to ask." 

"I see," Frigga said. "Have you spoken to your parents, child?" 

"I did try," Dagna sighed. "And now I suspect Father is avoiding me, which is curious." 

"I'm sure you have done nothing to warrant that, dear," Frigga said. 

"Of course not," Dagna said, a sly smile on her face. 

"Leave your father to me for the present," Frigga suggested. "But until I have a chance to speak to him, perhaps you will find the answers you seek in one of the libraries?" 

Dagna wrinkled her nose, for poking around in the eerily quiet halls of Asgard's libraries was Ullr's favorite activity and not her own. But if Grandmother suggested it, there was probably some merit to it. "Very well," she said, sighing again before leaning over to peck her grandmother on the cheek. "Thank you, Grandmother." 

"You are most welcome, my dear, and you may always speak to me about _anything_ ," Frigga replied, her gentle hands warm on Dagna's face. "As is your father, not that he remembers it." 

The library was, as usual, entirely too quiet, and she was almost relieved to find Ullr there, happily reading. It wasn't that Dagna disliked books, she just preferred to take them to a place that was busier and noisier, anything but the unnerving echoing silence of the libraries. And today she wanted to solve this mystery and quickly, and she lacked the patience to do it alone. Enlisting Ullr's help seemed the best course of action, and he brightened immediately when she mentioned it. 

"Follow me," he said, skipping on ahead. When they reached a door in the far stone wall, he motioned for her to step closer. "We aren't really supposed to go in here, but this is where they keep the best books." 

"How do you know they are best," she asked, raising a knowing eyebrow at her brother, "if you are not supposed to go?" 

"I never said I hadn't been," Ullr replied, grinning. He put one finger to his lips. "Now keep quiet, I have to concentrate on this spell." 

There were indeed a great many useful books in the small room Ullr unlocked with his magic, so many that it took them hours to sift through them all, separating what Ullr deemed helpful from that which was not. Finally, he unearthed some manner of ancient text detailing magical control of the elements, and sat down on the floor to page through it while Dagna paced, bored and irritated. 

"Do it again," Ullr instructed. "Whatever it is. I need to see it." 

"I cannot simply--" 

He threw a book at her face, but nothing happened, and she kicked at him.

"It has to be a _serious_ threat, Ullr," she sighed. 

"Describe it to me, then," Ullr said, and she did, or at least she did the best she could, for it was a strange and recent phenomenon.

"It says here," Ullr said, frowning as he ran his finger over the text, "that the only beings in all the realms known to possess the ability to harness ice in this particular way are..." 

"Are what? Ullr, if this is some manner of jest, I swear--" 

"The Jotnar," he said, staring at the book and then back at her. He raised an eyebrow. "You aren't secretly blue, are you?" 

She punched him on the arm, but he only chuckled in response. 

"Do you think I might be?" she asked, and her brother shrugged. 

"Anything's possible," he said. "You do like the cold." 

"I suppose that would explain Father's mood," Dagna mused. "Perhaps they stole me and they shouldn't have done." 

"Yes, of course, our parents broke the Allfather's command and went to Jotunheim and stole a baby," Ullr said flatly, putting the books back where they belonged. "Well, it's an interesting story, but I think that's probably all it is, sister: a story." 

"Perhaps," Dagna said thoughtfully, and then she grinned wickedly down at her brother. "I suppose I might as well ask, if only to see the looks on their faces when I do." 

"You know," Ullr said, laughing, "I almost hope that it's true. It would explain so much." 

They found both of their parents in their chambers when they returned, but before Dagna could begin to formulate a question, Ullr stepped up. 

"Mother, Father," he began, clearly trying very hard to be completely serious and failing, "we wanted you to know that we are aware of the terrible family secret." 

He could get no further before he collapsed into giggles, and Dagna rolled her eyes at his failed efforts. 

"Oh, you are impossible," Dagna said. "What Ullr is trying to say is that we know of my unusual heritage." 

Loki promptly dropped the glass of wine he was holding. "What did you say?" 

"We were doing research in the library," Ullr explained. 

"Grandmother suggested it," Dagna said, and Sif raised her eyebrows. 

"Did she indeed," Sif murmured, glancing at Loki, who refused to meet her eyes. 

"It seemed the most logical explanation, really," Dagna said. "Though Ullr makes the story sound entirely too _fantastic_. No one rode off to Jotunheim and stole me, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation." 

"Oh, there is," Sif said. "I take it you aren't particularly bothered by the thought of it all?" 

"No," Dagna shrugged, and at that, Loki slapped his hand down on the table. 

"Very well," he grumbled, glaring at Sif for a moment. "Allow me to explain, then, for someone around here is indeed in the habit of borrowing children from other realms, but it was not your mother or I." 

He told the tale, then, of Odin and Laufey and how he came to be raised on Asgard with no memory of his time in the realm of his birth and no hint that he had ever been anywhere else until the day when Odin and Frigga had carefully explained it all.

"Oh," Dagna said simply, when he had finished. "So _you_ can teach me how best to use these abilities, then? I have been trying to understand how it works, but-- whatever is the matter, Father?" 

Loki looked vaguely horrified. "I have no idea how to-- why would you _use it_?" 

"Are you well?" Dagna asked, and she saw that her mother and Ullr both had to bite back a laugh. "Do you not know what this means? I am _never_ without a weapon."

"That is an excellent point," Sif said, and Loki glared at her. 

Dagna sighed. "If you cannot teach me, Father, I suppose I will have to teach myself." 

"And me," Ullr interrupted. 

"You can already do magic," Dagna pointed out. 

"Yes, but your trick is more interesting at present," Ullr complained. "And learning magic is work."

"Well, you have the same blood in your veins as I do," Dagna told him, winking. "There may yet be hope for you."

Ullr's eyes lit up. "Come and fight with me! Perhaps if I think you are about to kill me, something will happen."

"Very well," Dagna said, but there was a hint of enthusiasm in her voice that she did not manage to hide. She turned to her parents. "Will you come and watch? One of us is bound to accuse the other of cheating otherwise." 

"Of course," Sif said, but Loki only frowned, and Dagna sighed.

"If it bothers you, do not come," Dagna said. "But it does not bother _me_."

"It may yet bother you, if people begin to talk," Loki said, but Dagna only shook her head.

"If people begin to talk, I will lie to them and say that it is magic," she said slowly, as if she were the parent and he the child.

"And if they do not believe you? What then?"

"What does it matter to me? I am of royal blood one way or the other, am I not? I know my place in Asgard and I know that place is secure. Truly, Father, what is the worst that can happen? Do you think that everyone will suddenly go mad and demand our deaths?"

"I admit there have been moments when my thoughts have turned that way," he said darkly, and she looked up at him, briefly astonished.

"Let them try," she laughed, her hand upon her sword and a smile upon her face that was half confident, half cruel. "And then let them bring us a worthier class of adversary." 

"Dagna," Ullr shouted then, motioning for her to hurry, and she shook her head and followed, no longer willing to wait for her parents.

"That was not at all what I expected," Loki murmured, as he and Sif watched them go.

"They are not only your children, husband," Sif remarked pointedly. "Shall we?"


End file.
